Gender and European Integration

The paper assesses the contribution of gender approaches to understanding Europeanintegration. It offers a conceptualization of such approaches as including a distinctontology, epistemology and methodology. While feminist literature on the EuropeanUnion is diverse, all such literature sheds light on the gendered process of Europeanintegration. The authors identify two distinct contributions of this literature: (a) itillustrates the relevance of movement actors and other advocates in shaping EU policies;(b) it shows that economic integration entails the creation of new gender regimes. Thepaper illustrates these contentions presenting case studies of the EU’s response to sextrafficking, the reform of the common agricultural policy, and of enlargement.

Be Free? The European Union's post-Arab Spring Women's Empowerment as Neoliberal Governmentality

This article analyses post-Arab Spring EU initiatives to promote women's empowerment in the Southern Mediterranean region. Inspired by Foucauldian concepts of governmentality, it investigates empowerment as a technology of biopolitics that is central to the European neoliberal model of governance. In contrast to dominant images such as normative power Europe that present the EU as a norm-guided actor promoting political liberation, the article argues that the EU deploys a concept of functional freedom meant to facilitate its vision of economic development. As a consequence, the alleged empowerment of women based on the self-optimisation of individuals and the statistical control of the female population is a form of bio-power. In this regard, empowerment works as a governmental technology of power instead of offering a measure to foster fundamental structural change in Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) societies. The EU therefore fails in presenting and promoting an alternative normative political vision distinct from the incorporation of women into the hierarchy of the existing market society

Les apports féministes aux relations internationales

Le champ d’étude des relations internationales (RI) féministes a-t-il quelque chose à dire sur le développement ? Il y a vingt ans, la question aurait été purement rhétorique : les féministes qui travaillaient dans le domaine des RI étaient profondément influencées par la littérature portant sur le thème genre et développement, à laquelle elles ont également contribué. Mais quand la politique internationale s’est militarisée au début de ce siècle, elles ont réorienté leurs recherches vers l’é..

Gender experts in international governance: Mapping the contours of a field

Twenty years of gender mainstreaming in international organisations (IOs) has produced an international network of gender experts and a distinctive body of expertise on gender relations. Gender experts have led the development of policies, built capacity through training, designed and implemented projects, pioneered new administrative techniques (such as gender budgeting), spearheaded innovative research, and evaluated interventions geared towards advancing gender equality and women’s empower..